


The Brave One

by JayEz



Series: Husbands in Crime (Coldwave Week 2016) [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic Mick Rory, Kid Fic, M/M, Mick's Scars, Orphaned Original Character, POV Leonard Snart, Post-Canon, The Team Succeeds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 21:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6255928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayEz/pseuds/JayEz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Len and Mick try to go back to their life of crime after the team kills Vandal Savage. It works – until Mick saves a young child from a burning building. </p>
<p>[Coldwave Week, Day 2: Domestic Life]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Brave One

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-canon and based on the assumption that Mick returns to the team and helps defeat Savage once and for all. 
> 
> Originally, this was intended as Day 7, but then I had a better idea for that one… *grins-mysteriously*

Raymond offers both of them a job after Vandal Savage turns to dust, thanks to a well-aimed blow on Kendra’s part, but they respectfully decline.

Len doesn’t expect the kicked-puppy-look they receive as Raymond’s shoulders slump. 

“Well, uh.” 

The billionaire catches himself in the blink of an eye. Somewhere along the way, he acquired something akin to a poker face, and Len’s not sure whether he likes this battle-hardened version of Ray or not. 

“If you change your mind, my door’s always open.” 

It speaks volumes that neither he nor Mick shrugs him off. Things have changed, after all.

It’s not as if Len ever thought he and Mick would simply be able to revert back to how they operated before saving the world with Rip and their merry gang of formerly unimportant low-lives. Quite the contrary, in fact. 

Yet never in a million year would Len have imagined Mick Rory to feel empathy for anyone outside of his crew. 

Which is why, when it happens, all Len can do is stare. 

Mick, that infuriating man whose absence feels like a missing limb to Len, is holding a child. A little, scared girl with black skin and frizzy hair, an actual, whimpering _child_ is cradled, somewhat awkwardly, in Mick’s large hands. 

“Found her on the way out,” he eventually volunteers. 

Len’s voice deigns to return then. “And you thought you’d take her with you to our safe house.” 

A shrug. The girl fuzzes. 

“Why don’t you walk me through your thought process, Mick? Just for fun,” Len sneers and his partner’s expression darkens. 

“She’d’ve been burnt alive, Len.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“They annoyed me!”

“Which I told you they would, but did you listen?” Len hisses back, and they’d have argued for another half hour and eventually ended up having mind-blowing, anger-fuelled make-up sex against the bedroom door if the stupid kid hadn’t starting wailing at an eardrum-shattering volume. 

“Make it stop!” Len barks. 

To his surprise, Mick actually succeeds. Turns out little girls find a lighter and fire just as interesting as fully grown men with a penchant for effective – albeit unprompted – pyrotechnics.

“I’ll put her to bed.”

Mick makes to go, though he stops when Len heaves a sigh. Mick recognizes every single type of sigh Len is capable of sighing, including this long-suffering ‘hang-on-you’re-forgetting-something’ variation.

“She should probably eat before that,” Len suggests, which prompts a four minute and fifty-six second long search for child-appropriate food. 

The girl could be anywhere between eighteen and twenty-four months, for all Len recalls from Lisa’s toddler years. She’s not talking yet, so probably on the lower end of the spectrum. Or maybe she’s just not speaking with strange men who kidnap her out of burning buildings. 

She seems thrilled with the Cheerios they only have because Mick’s breakfast choices are ridiculous, and nods off while eating the last few spoonfuls. It’s kind of adorable, Len’s got to admit. 

“We’ll need stuff,” Mick murmurs into his neck later. 

“Stuff.”

“Y’know. Food. Clothes. Toys.”

Len has no idea how to respond to that. The girl probably has a family that’s going to miss her, so what’s the point of buying more than the essentials?

But Mick’s eyes are warm and hopeful when Len turns around in his arms, and just like every single time – at least ever since that incident that almost cost Mick his life and Len his sanity – Len caves. 

What he refuses to do, however, is ignore the elephant in the room. 

The admittedly cute elephant, who’s now the proud owner of blue pajamas with white miniature snowflakes on them. 

“Hm.”

Mick looks up from where he’s stacking blocks on top of each other on the floor. “What?”

The girl, dubbed “kid” by Len (or “kiddo” if he’s feeling generous) and “darlin’” by Mick, seizes the moment and makes the tower Mick built crash, causing the blocks to scatter all across the carpet. 

It stops being entertaining after watching it five times, Len discovered. 

“I found why she was in that building,” he explains. “Her parents were part of that Nigerian crime family our _friends_ have been fighting.”

Mick’s eyes swivel to the girl and back to Len. “Leverage?”

“Maybe.”

He sees the exact moment the tense he used registers with his partner. 

“ _Were?_ ”

“Drive-by shooting, couple of hours after the fire.”

Len lets the information settle. He even waits until the kid is done wrecking block towers before breaching the topic again. 

“We can’t raise a child, Mick.”

“We could. Our record’s clean ever since Gideon did that thing.” 

“You’re serious.”

It’s not a question, because the line of Mick’s shoulders leaves no room for doubt. And the man isn’t done yet. 

“We got all that stuff we stole and haven’t sold yet, and all those accounts you made us set up in the seventies. Hell, we could probably raise five kids and send ‘em off to college.”

Len’s mind is still stuck on ‘we could’. “What brought this on, Mick?”

Another shrug. “Dunno.”

“Bullshit,” Len hisses, and Mick’s eyes narrow like he’s a split second away from calling him out on language in front of the kid. 

The girl babbles at them, holding up a block to Len who stares at it. 

“Gah,” she says, and shakes the block. It’s blue, and Len accepts it before arching a brow at his partner. 

“Well?”

He watches Mick’s throat work as he swallows. “’S just… We ain’t getting’ any younger. We got our perfect score, don’t we?”

Damn, Len knew those words would come back to haunt him. It’s how he described the bank accounts he set up during their travels with Rip – since, by 2016, the accounts will have returned quite the handsome interest rate. 

Which they did. Len just never imagined a stunt like that would count as a score in Mick’s head. 

“Just to make sure we’re on the same page,” Len says eventually when he realizes the silence has gone on for far too long. “You’re proposing we keep the princess and, what? Take Raymond up on his offer?”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t tempted.”

_Touché._ Len averts his gaze. He turns the blue building block over in his hands. 

“How about this,” he suggests. “It’s Friday, which is basically the weekend as far as the nice employees of Child Protective Services are concerned, so no one’s gonna mind if we keep her till Monday. That’ll give us ample time to determine if we’re fit for domestic bliss.”

Mick tilts his head in consideration. “Alright. But only if you’re taking this seriously.”

Len heaves another sigh. “Yes, dear.”

Twelve hours later, he wishes he still had a way to contact Rip because he’s in desperate need of a time ship to reverse the events of the past few days. Turns out Mick, who’s more than capable of breaking someone’s neck with his bare hands, has a paternal side to him that quickly proves to be Len’s kryptonite. 

By Sunday morning, Mick’s singing to the little one. _Singing._ While cooking breakfast. 

She also loves sitting on Mick’s shoulders and towering over Len, or pulling at his nose when he’s trying to wrestle her into clothes so they can head outside, where she does her best to walk on her own. She falls, again and again, but always gets up and never burst into tears because of it. Len’s gotta respect that. 

Her name, according to Len’s research, is Akina. The brave one. 

“You wanna read her bedtime story this time?” Mick asks, looking up from the makeshift crib they put together where the girl’s fighting to stay awake after an exhausting day running both of them ragged. 

“Nah, you do it.”

Mick’s still a bit embarrassed about reading aloud – he stumbles over words sometimes; objectively speaking he’s horrible at it. And yet somehow he has Akina completely enamored. 

Len watches from the doorway to the second bedroom and something warm unfurls in his chest. 

“She survived a weekend with us,” he comments when they’re both getting ready for bed. 

Mick pauses in the middle of pulling of his shirt, then completes the movement and levels a soft gaze at Len from across the bedroom. His scars are thrown into stark relief by the dim lighting. 

“I just…” Len clears his throat that’s clogging up with something he refuses to name. “I never thought you’d want… you know.”

“Time travel puts things into perspective, I guess.”

A wry smile tugs at Len’s lips. “You realize what this means for our criminal career.”

“Yeah.” Mick pops the top buttons of his pants. “But…”

He doesn’t need to continue – Len knows exactly what’s going through his head, mostly because the same’s been going through his own. 

After saving the world, breaking into the remotest and securest locations; after facing off with an immortal tyrant… ordinary jobs ain’t measuring up anymore. 

“What about your little problem?” he asks, not looking at Mick. Folding his pants and placing them on the chair in the corner is a lot more interesting. 

He feels Mick move regardless. When Len turns towards the room again, Mick’s right there, wearing only his briefs and a delicate expression. 

“Thought I’d go for therapy again. Worked real good when Lisa was training for the national team, right?”

Len feels an ‘and’ coming. 

“Palmer said he could help.”

_There it is._

“So you wanna take in an orphan, put our criminal career on ice, join Palmer Tech as consultants and live happily ever after till we die of old age?”

Len feels raw. He’s sure that his face betrays how much he _wants_ that vision to become reality – how much he wants a family, a genuine one, not the screwed up mess life gave him. 

“Dunno about old age. Pretty sure Lisa’s gonna put you six-feet-under first,” Mick quips. 

Len groans and buries his face in the nape of Mick’s neck. “I hate you… Just when I thought I’d forgotten all about her wretched affair with _Ramon_.”

He can feel Mick’s laughter against his cheek. Strong arms pull Len closer and he lets his hands roam across the strong planes of Mick’s back. He can identify every single scar there; even is responsible for how some of them came about. He has a matching set of his own, and then some. 

Who’s he kidding? The decision’s been made the second he saw Mick asleep on the sofa with Akina drooling on his chest, napping peacefully. 

Len has been a lot of things in his lifetime – son, punching bag, brother, protector, guardian, crook, liar, thief, murderer, time traveller, lover, partner. Now he’s going to add ‘parent’ to the mix. 

He pulls back and seeks Mick’s gaze. 

“Yes,” he tells him. 

Mick’s responding smile is blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> Kid Fics are my guiltiest of guilty pleasures, so what better way to celebrate my birthday? 
> 
> ...Yes, this just was blatant comment bait, though I really do want to know your thoughts. I hope Len and Mick abandoning their life of crime doesn't seem ooc in this AU.


End file.
